Wireless mesh networks typically consist of nodes transmitting to each other based on directional wireless links established by high gain, point-to-point antennas. In addition to practical constraints on channel coding schemes employed and/or regulatory constraints on transmit power, optimal use of bandwidth (or, equivalently for the purposes of this disclosure, “capacity”) for such wireless links is complicated by determining how many data streams to initiate at a node with any particular neighbor node.
Multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) enabled networks, for example, advantageously employ multi-path scattering to establish more than one spatial channel, each carrying independent data streams, within the wireless link between two nodes. In the context of a mesh network, processing capacity may be limited relative to the maximum number of data streams that could be initiated by all of a node's neighbors. Routing algorithms for nodes with a single, omni-directional antenna are, at the very least, not optimized for wireless mesh networks with MIMO antennas.
There is, therefore, a need in the art for improved data stream control within MIMO enabled mesh networks.